Driver's side Cylinders 50-60 PSI, Drinkers side 130-140 5.7L 350 1986 K10 Suburban Crate Engine

[beastmazter]

The cheaper, roadkill way to do this is to just run a fine emory cloth over the journals to smooth the ridges out. Run it around the journal(with the scratches), not across it. Then get some plastigauge and assemble everything dry with a bit of the plastigauge across each journal. If it is "close enough", then clean the plastigauge off, put some assembly lube on everything, and send it. Cost for plastigauge and emory close is probably ~$20. I'm driving my 1993 Honda Civic right now with ~260,000 miles on it. It blew a head gasket and was smoking pretty good. I pulled it down and found massive amounts of carbon buildup and everything was wet with oil. I decided to do the bare minimum because this is just my beater commuter car, so it got a new headgasket and I bought a $10 block of billet aluminum to use as a flat plate and stuck 320 grit sandpaper to it and used it to "surface" the block and head. I figured the oil probably came from either weak rings from it overheating or worn valve seals, so bought a set of valve seals for $20 and a new set of NPR rings for $40. ****** ball hone was $30. Pulled the pistons and sure enough the oil control rings were glued into the piston by carbon deposits, so I ****** ball honed it and then cleaned the pistons and installed new rings. Then replaced the valve seals, cleaned the valves, and lapped them in. All in... maybe a weeks work and about $250 in stuff. Engine fires right up now and runs like a champ with no smoking and no loss of compression. I bet the dang thing goes another 150-200k miles before someone has to do it all over again.

I could go both ways on this. I don't have a ton of experience past head gaskets and light head work (have had too many 80s subaru's, head gaskets are a given). Not having touched a crank, it would definitely be better left to the pro's. Too bad I am a curious hack who needs to try everything myself, so I will probably go the roadkill route. Sounds fun, and who doesn't love wasting money when things go wrong. I did see a bunch of articles and videos on people doing the emory cloth method. Since I already have bearings that are likely the right size, and snow incoming very soon, This really sounds like the best bet. Need to get this thing to move around so I can clear the driveway and take it to work when the blizzards start.

Appreciate the roadkill advice!

 

[beastmazter]

Gotta love a happy ending.
Watched Roadworthy Rescues the other night.
Derek ****** balled a sb400 he had sitting around. Put a dang supercharger on it!

Ran fine!

I keep hearing the tolerances are much more forgiving on these than modern engines. I am all about putting that to the test and seeing what backyard things I can do. It's like winning a game. I do like to make sure the gambles I make are good ones, which is hard for me to judge this far into an engine.

I do love his YouTube show vice grip garage. I am a city kid now, but he reminds me of all the dads from my small hometown. I also only buy cars that don't run, so I love to watch the shared pain. Need to find the episode where he puts a supercharger on the 400 that sounds hilarious.

 

[Bextreme04]

I keep hearing the tolerances are much more forgiving on these than modern engines. I am all about putting that to the test and seeing what backyard things I can do. It's like winning a game. I do like to make sure the gambles I make are good ones, which is hard for me to judge this far into an engine.

I do love his YouTube show vice grip garage. I am a city kid now, but he reminds me of all the dads from my small hometown. I also only buy cars that don't run, so I love to watch the shared pain. Need to find the episode where he puts a supercharger on the 400 that sounds hilarious.

Too tight on tolerance is the biggest issue. Just keep in mind that after each step of assembly, if it doesn't spin free, you messed up. Same thing for ring gaps, if you have too little gap the ring ends will hit each other under load and seize to the cylinder walls. They will then break the ring lands on the piston or shatter the rings themselves and then you have oil everywhere and no compression. Ring gaps from "too tight" to "too big" is a huge swing.. like .015" to .030". Anything bigger than .030" gap and you will start to have some excessive blow-by... but the engine will still run fine and likely go forever, so it is definitely well worth it to err on the side of "too big" if there is any question.

Same thing goes for bearing gap, except that you have a window where everything will be fine and anything on either end of that window will be very bad news. Gap too tight and you will have a ton of heat and could spin a bearing and destroy the motor. Too big of a gap and it won't hold oil pressure and you'll have the same problem. .0025-.0030" is the sweet spot for a 350 crank. too much more than .0030 and you'll need a high volume pump or you're going to have a bad day.

 

[beastmazter]

The engine I am replacing, had 4 cylinders with shattered rings and ringlands. Would like to avoid that for sure. I picked up the handy grinder for the rings and will be making sure to measure everything. Have the haynes techbook for the 350 to reference. Crossing my fingers for a smooth 'rebuild'.

 

[beastmazter]

Looks like they are .010

Noticed some scratches across the bearing also.

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[beastmazter]

Cam shaft looks surprisingly good for the way these mains look. The bearing with the deepest cuts has created a light scratch on the camshaft, possibly too deep for a polish.

Need to rent to tool to pull the harmonic balancer so I can pull it out to clean and inspect.

Sharing some photos, my knowledge of what is causing the damage is limited. Few free to jump in with comments if you know what’s going on here.

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[beastmazter]

I am going to start a new thread, this is no longer about the previous engine. Appreciate everyone’s advice.